Wed, Nov 23, 2016

The Princess of France

(2014) dir Matías Piñeiro w/Juian Larquier Tellarini, Agustina Muñoz, Alessio Rigo de Righi, Maria Villar [67 min; DCP]
Argentinian filmmaker Matías Piñeiro is obsessed with Shakespeare… but not in the usual sense for a filmmaker. His obsession leads him not to mount grand adaptations of the Bard’s works but, instead, to explore the themes and narratives of the plays by entwining them with the stories of characters who are themselves mounting productions. In THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE for instance, the lives of a group of friends working on a radio version of Love’s Labours Lost become hopelessly enmeshed with the fiction they’re reworking.

“For Piñero’s characters, Shakespeare isn’t just a creative challenge; it establishes the rules of their universe, even as their director expertly breaks them by forging a new path.” – Eric Kohn, Indiewire

“The action takes place in streets and bedrooms, studios and museums, and the actors are never word-bound; Piñeiro, a master choreographer, sets them in graceful motion and captures them in fluid, lively images.” – Richard Brody, New Yorker